Telenor sets VoLTE roaming on European telco agenda

Sunday 1 September 2019 ｜ Press Release ｜ Member Press Release

With the telco industry starting to shut down 2G- and 3G-networks, it is crucial to come up with an alternative voice roaming solution. Up to now, the industry’s VoLTE roaming implementation pace has been very slow and it is time to act. October 1st 2018, Telenor Denmark was first in Europe to launch outbound VoLTE roaming. At the same time Telenor Norway opened for inbound VoLTE traffic from Telenor Denmark. Roaming is a highly collective set-up and success is dependent on mutual industry efforts.

Telenor’s Global Wholesale unit has played a significant role in making VoLTE roaming become reality in Telenor by coordinating efforts across all company units. Telenor Norway and Denmark were chosen as pilot project in order to learn and build the necessary competence that will be used to address other Telenor units and their specific network and billing challenges. This means that upcoming Telenor affiliates can implement VoLTE roaming faster and more efficient, which also includes cost synergies.

Harald Krohg, CEO of Telenor Group’s Global Wholesale unit says “I am proud that Telenor now has taken the first steps towards establishing a new voice roaming solution. However, VoLTE roaming is not a single operator’s task. It can only be valuable if the whole industry embraces the challenge and makes the substantial efforts which are necessary to move voice roaming from 2G/3G to VoLTE. As an industry it is time to work together, enable the shutdown of the legacy networks and thereby simplify and optimize the way we work.”

For the time being Telenor has enabled VoLTE roaming only on selected handsets from Sony and Samsung. In order to speed up VoLTE roaming rollout and start looking for effective ways to enable VoLTE roaming for all customers, it is urged to onboard other handset vendors as well. “If Telenor are to succeed with this, we need both our roaming partners and handset vendors to give more attention to VoLTE roaming and contribute with their pieces of this important roaming puzzle. This is where our focus will be in the months to come. We have a solution ready for inbound as well as outbound and are now working with onboarding one affiliate at a time”, Krohg adds.